Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Thematic Working Group Report published

The Thematic Working Group on Early Childhood Education Care (ECEC) reflected on the diverse governance arrangements of early childhood education and care under different national authorities in the education as well as social, family and health sectors. It has developed a proposal for a European Quality Framework(843 kB) so as to improve, monitor, and evaluate the quality of early childhood education and care systems.

The group identified and analysed success criteria of effective policies to develop guidance for national policy makers. It focused on five main aspects of quality in early childhood education and care:

• access,
• workforce,
• curriculum,
• evaluation/monitoring,
• governance/funding.

The group brought together representatives from 25 EU Member States plus Turkey and Norway, the Eurydice Network, the European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE) and the OECD.

This group was one of the eleven Thematic Working Groups set up for the period 2011-13 as part of the Open Method of Coordination to implement theEducation and Training 2020 (ET2020) strategic framework.

They were designed to help Member States address the ley challenges of their education and trainings systems and the common priorities agreed at European level.

Since 2014, six ET 2020 Working Groups have replaced the Thematic Working Groups, (but stakeholders, like parents are not represented in them anymore - editor's comment)

Other Outputs of the TWG on ECEC:

• Peer Learning Activity Report: Curriculum/pedagogical content of ECEC(205 kB) 
• Background paper "Early Childhood Education and Care: Specificities of the Hungarian System"(2.11 Mb) 
• Peer Learning Activity Report: Workforce in ECEC(654 kB) 
• Peer Learning Activity Report: Access to ECEC(230 kB) 
• Peer Learning Activity Report: Evaluation and monitoring of ECEC(863 kB) 

Source: http://ec.europa.eu/education/policy/strategic-framework/archive/index_en.htm